Speakers Bill Owens, President of Owens Construction and Shashi Bellamkonda, CMO of Surefire Social share their presentation of a talk they gave at the 2016 Remodeling Show on how remodelers can manage their online reputation in terms of the importance of reviews, acquiring more reviews, and responding to reviews you receive (both 5-stars and 1-stars).

1. 10 Steps to Help You
Manage Your Online Ratings
Bill Owens & Shashi Bellamkonda
#RDJ2016

2. Thank you for coming!

3. Bill Owens
Bill Owens, CGR, CAPS, CGP, is president of Owens Construction,
currently celebrating over thirty years as a leading residential
design/build firm in central Ohio.
Active with:
National Association of Home Builders
Home Builders Institute
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies

4. Shashi Bellamkonda
Shashi Bellamkonda is the Chief Marketing Officer of Surefire
Social - Solving Local Marketing for successful remodelers.
Shashi Bellamkonda is also an Adjunct faculty member of
Georgetown University teaching Marketing Analytics and Digital,
Social Media and Mobile and keynote speaker on Digital Marketing
and Small Business.

5. Background:
Remodeling Companies’
Challenges

6. Resting on our laurels
Do great work
Clients love the experience
Great team
Problem jobs:
Work out issues with clients privately
Do right by the Customers - Always to a
mutually satisfying conclusion

7. “Word of Mouth” has
gone to “Word of Mouse”
Believe the vast majority of our opportunity
is referral and repeat business
But what are we perhaps not seeing?

8. Make (or at least soften) the
sale even before prospects
reach out to us-
Very likely lost opportunity because:
Search before homeowners contact us
Potential clients see few or no ratings
Maybe some average ratings on a few websites

9. Understanding
the growing
importance of
an online, social
presence
Tough time getting clients to
engage
Small number of yearly
transactions (30 to 50 jobs/year)
Lackluster number of reviews
How to best excite and encourage
clients to rate and review us?

10. Where to
send
customers,
let alone,
where are
prospects
looking?
We know Google is
important….confused on what sites
we should be focusing on.

11. Feeling defensive,
insulted and destroyed
by 1 star reviews
Source:
MotherJones
Joshua Tree National Park, CA

12. How to think about
this….

13. Reinforce Your
Beliefs
Do excellent work and have
lots of pride in your process as
well as the finished product

14. Expect that this
could happen
.....because it will…..and that’s OK!

15. Get ahead of this
- Manage through these events
- Don’t react emotionally, internally
or in the public eye

16. Create a shift
in how the
public views
the industry as
a whole.
Posted by Web Staff - Email | Facebook | Twitter
CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) - It's bad enough when you find out the
contractor working on your home is unqualified. Imagine if you
never hired that person in the first place.
It's the latest home scam.
The scam typically hits the people least equipped to deal with it,
mainly the elderly……

17. Readjust our thinking
● Spend more on creating satisfied
clients
● Well-developed and properly
channeled reputation
management system

18. Reputation is more than
Just Reviews
5 things to check/do today

19. Today customers know more about the business than the
business owners themselves
Mark Richardson Author, Keynote Speaker and Remodeling Expert

20. 1. Outdated Web
Presence
Website has not been updated in years - Are you still
in business?
Recent content?
Typos….
Not mobile friendly?
Do you have your own domain name?

21. 2. Consistency of
Information
Inconsistency of data - Name,
Address, Phone confuses not only
your customers but search
engines

22. 3. Broken Websites
Websites with broken images or
broken links indicate you do not
care about customers’ experience

23. 4. No Reviews for Your
Business
“88% of consumers have read
reviews to determine the quality
of a local business.”

24. 5. No Feedback Channel
Provide an easy way for
customers to contact the business
first

25. Why Folks Write Reviews?
15
25 22

26. Understanding the Reviewer Emotion
Warn other Consumers
I want to warn others of bad products
I want to save others from having the same negative
experiences
Venting negative feelings
I like to get anger of my chest
I want to take vengeance upon the company
The company harmed me, and now I will harm the
company
Help me shake off frustrations about bad buys
J.M. Rensink - What motivates people to write online reviews and which role does personality play?
Help other consumers
I want to help others with my own positive experiences
I want to give others the opportunity to buy the right product
Helping the company
In my opinion, good companies should be
supported
I am so satisfied with a company and its product
that I want to help the company to be
successful
Emotion – Negative>> Positive
Intensity

27. Harness Customer Emotions
Social benefits
I believe a chat among like-minded people
is a nice thing
It is fun to communicate this way because
I meet nice people
Self enhancement
This way I can express my joy about a
good buy
I can tell others about a great experience
I feel good when I can tell others my
buying success
My contributions show others that I am a
clever customer
Advice seeking
I hope to receive advice from others to help
solve my problems
I expect to receive tips or support from other
users
J.M. Rensink - What motivates people to write online reviews and which role does personality
play?

28. 10 Steps to Act on your
Reputation Management

29. 1.Goals and Objectives
A proactive strategy to get reviews is required for all businesses
Create a well-defined strategy
Mission: “We will strive to get nothing less than 5 Stars”

30. 2. Plan
Set responsibility
Proactive
Getting Customer Reviews
Reactive
Monitor >> Respond>>Resolve

31. 3.Training Every member of your company
can help you with your review
strategy
Define the experience
Explain the process
Reinforce importance of reviews
Set rules of engagement
Provide service standards
Power of conversation, eye contact

32. 2016
4. Wide web presence
Proprietary + Confidential
www.yourdomain.com

33. 5. Target
campaigns to
customers
where they can
review you
Houzz
Yelp
Google, etc.

34. 6. Ask but don’t reward
Use Messages like “People on Yelp
like us!” or “People love us on
Yelp!”
DON’T offer incentives for
reviews

35. 7. Engage
Increase your chances by non-
review type engagements such as
check-ins, photos, liking, or adding
tips
Create Ideabooks on Houzz

36. 8. Using
Mobile &
Apps
Reviews can be done from
anywhere including on the phone
Use SMS to send customers links
to reviews with their permission
Take pictures and send to your
website
Use Geo Location check-ins to add
reviews and location data to your
website

37. 9. Get alerts for new
reviews
➔Google Alerts are free
➔Other tools like Mention.net
➔Reputation Management Tools
➔Agency

38. 10. Respond to all reviews
New prospects can come across old reviews
Customers form opinions on company response

39. Guide to
Responding
to Reviews

40. Get Ahead with
TESTIMONIALS
Step 1:
Setup a client testimonials plan
Step 2:
Use tools and automation to setup a system to
seek reviews
Train & equip your employees to get reviews
Step 3:
Publish testimonials on your website
Use testimonials in sales materials

41. WHO TO
RESPOND TO
Positive Reviews: Not
necessary all the time,
but still good practice
Negative Reviews: You
need to respond 100%
of the time
Don’t respond angrily

42. WHY
RESPOND
Turn a negative review into a positive
experience!
1. Show clients you care
2. Demonstrate your passion for customer
service
3. Increase customer retention
4. Increase new customer acquisition

43. HOW TO
RESPOND Thank them for the review
Be humble and appreciative
Explain the future changes
How are you going to prevent
this from happening again?

44. WHERE TO
RESPOND
1. Publicly
Shows both other, and potential, clients that you
care
2. Privately
Address and resolve the client’s personal issues

45. WHEN TO RESPOND
The sooner the better
Aim for under 24 hours
OK to respond to older reviews

46. BAD REVIEWS
NOT ALWAYS A
BAD THING...
Getting bad reviews can be good?
Opportunity Customers
Valuable feedback and
opportunity to improve
More honest and transparent
Having only positive reviews
may not be trustworthy

47. REPUTATION
Bad reviews are not the problem,
not answering is the problem.

48. ELEMENTS OF A
RESPONSE
1. Always Say Thank You
2. Mention positive points from
the review
3. Apologize if things went
wrong
4. Suggest contacting you by
phone or email

49. Response Best
Practices
1. Respond to reviews fast but take the time to
think through your response
2. Resist the urge to vent on the reviewer or focus
on how to get the review resolved
3. Don’t get defensive and get into too much
detail
4. Take the conversation offline
5. If reviewer has not responded search in your
records and reach out privately
6. Be transparent and apologize if a mistake has
been made

50. Reviews should
reflect your
brand
1. Be conscious of the Streisand effect -
”phenomenon whereby an attempt to
hide, remove, or censor a piece of
information has the unintended
consequence of publicizing the
information more widely”
2. If there are repeated bad reviews on the
same issue, you may need to look at your
operations
3. Your review represents your brand. Avoid
typos, grammatical mistakes and stay
positive

51. Don’t ignore reviews
hoping they will go
away

52. Conclusion
Setup, implement, and manage your company's reputation plan
long before a problem or crisis strikes
You can really change/regain your reputation
Get back the business you are losing because of your
reputation

53. My Advice,
“from the trenches”
Proactively-
Focus on showcasing all substantial projects on social media
and your website
Aggressively seek more and better quality ratings and reviews
on specific sites
Mandate responsiveness to any reviews by all company
representatives.

54. Group
Exercise
Create a Reputation Management
Plan
1) Audit your current reputation plan
2) What would you change?
3) What resources and budget to
allocate?
4) How do you measure the results?

55. New Trends in
Reviews
What will you do with your
findings next? How will you
further your research/findings?

56. We don’t go online. We live online.
Proprietary + Confidential

57. Reviews on
Instagram

58. Amazon

59. Source:BGR
Amazon

60. Maps

61. App Reviews

62. Neighborhood
Networks

63. Employee
Reviews

64. More
importance to
reviews on
Google

65. CONSUMERS MAKE DECISIONS USING
MICRO-MOMENTS

66. Thank You
Shashi@surefiresocial.com
Bill@owensconstruction.com